CNBC HD+ gets creative with screen real estate

November 20, 2007

CNBC HD+, the new HD financial news channel from CNBC, is using a Miranda Technologies Imagestore 750 master control and channel branding processor to present more investor information to its viewers than what’s available on the current SD channel.

The new CNBC HD+ channel incorporates an upconverted clean feed of the SD channel, which is used in 4:3 format on the left of the HD screen area, with HD graphics and tickers in the foreground. The space on the right of the screen area is used for supporting graphics. This allows more financial data to be presented than on the existing SD channel.

The goal of the new approach is to give viewers more tools to make financial decisions, said Steve Fastook, CNBC VP of technical and commercial operations. The approach lets the financial network display more than automatically acquired data in a loop. The network can also use the screen real estate to display in-depth statistics about a company being discussed, its competitor, industry segment or financial headlines, he said.

CNBC's SD channel shows only three major indices with variance and price at the top of the screen, such as the DOW, Nasdaq and FTSE. In contrast, the new CNBC HD+ channel, allows five indices to be shown so investors do not have to wait for relevant information to appear. The real-time financial data is fed from the stock exchange, and the Imagestore 750's DVE enables the data to be displayed in different positions for primetime and weekends.

The Imagestore 750 processor also allows a second video stream to be made available to CNBC HD+ viewers, using a small window in the bottom of the HD screen. Viewers can use their remote to switch the audio from the main video feed to the second video stream.

An HD viewing station, which includes Miranda's Kaleido-X multi-image display processor, allows the CNBC producer to control the graphics content based on the run down.